Unsafe Infoca Helicopters?

Saturday, June 30, 2018

By Hugh MacArthur

A national workers union has denounced the state of the infoca aircraft based at the Los Moralillos near the provincial capital of Granada.

According to the UGT on the 13th of June, after a routine flight, one of its helicopters had to be grounded. A replacement helicopter was flown in, but it too went U/S (unserviceable) not long after arriving.

Not surprisingly the Moralillos personnel were worried, more so after the helicopter company that leases helicopters to Infoca, nor the Junta gave any explanation for these defective aircraft.

But it doesn’t end there because they sent a third helicopter… which also became inoperative shortly after arrival owing to mechanical problems.

The fire-fighting base is waiting for the arrival of what will be the 4th helicopter supplied in the last 15 days.

According to the UGT, this sort of occurrence is not uncommon, so much so that the fire crews always board their helicopters on call-out with a degree anxiety – it’s bad enough that they risk their lives fighting fires without also risking them in faulty air transport.

Finally, the union pointed out that it was precisely this operations base where there was an air accident when both turbines on a helicopter returning from a fire in Almería with 11 personnel on board seized up.

It was only owing to the skill of the experienced pilot that it was possible to carry out an emergency landing. Nobody was killed but the aircraft was a write-off. This incident was hushed up, claims the UGT.